


pulling me out of the grave

by mjolnirbreaker



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Concussions, Fluff, Gen, Light Angst, Platonic Relationships, Post-Season/Series 02, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, monster hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-26 23:17:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18726856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjolnirbreaker/pseuds/mjolnirbreaker
Summary: “In an ideal world he wouldn’t be so annoying about it but, you know, it’s Steve. If he wants to be stubborn just let him.”Nancy isn’t great at just letting things be. Especially when those things are potentially harming one of the members of their very exclusive club of monster fighters who also happen to be Nancy’s favorite people in the world.





	pulling me out of the grave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [floralathena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/floralathena/gifts).



The night that everything ended, Nancy had made herself busy by cleaning. It was maybe the only time in her entire life she actually wanted to pick up after her brother and his friends. 

But she wasn’t really picking up after _them._ Mostly she was picking up after the monster that had been terrorizing them for the past few weeks. There were still papers with Will’s frantic scribbling scattered everywhere, kitchen chairs overturned, random makeshift weapons that had been discarded the moment Eleven came through the door, and yeah some of it was probably there before the fighting but Nancy had taken one look at Joyce, Jonathan, and Will all huddled together on the couch and decided that they could use some help. And it kept her busy. 

She had been in the kitchen, taking another stack of drawings to the trashcan and contemplating what she’d do when it was full because there was no way in hell she’d be walking outside in the dark to take the trash out, no fucking way, when her foot hit something solid. Seven pieces of a broken plate laid on the floor. Nancy had knelt down to gather it all up, not thinking much about how it happened because earlier she’d found Lucas’ slingshot suspiciously close to a broken picture frame, and then just before she could pick up the largest piece she noticed red. 

It wasn’t much. Just a streak of dark red on the jagged edge, contrasting harshly with the nice glossy white. Nancy had looked at it, uncomprehending, for what had to be a full minute before Dustin entered the kitchen. 

“Hey,” she had said without looking up from the plate, “why is there blood on this plate?”

Dustin came over to take a quick look before saying, “Probably because Billy Hargrove smashed it against Steve’s head.” 

He’d said it with the casual tone of someone who was thirteen-years-old and exhausted from monster fighting. Someone who wasn’t really connecting the dots. So Nancy, in an effort to not alarm Dustin or any of the nearby children any more than they already had been that night, simply nodded and said,

“Alright. Are you getting something to eat?”

Dustin informed her that he was indeed looking for something to eat. Nancy made the fastest, sloppiest peanut butter sandwich of her life and then left to look for Steve. She found him in the bathroom with the door wide open, standing at the sink. She had knocked on the doorframe and he’d looked up from the running water. 

“Hey how’s it going I just threw up.” Steve informed her with a weird combination of matter-of-factness and slurred speech. 

“Oh my God, Steve.” She joined him at the sink. Before, when they were together and she hadn’t accidentally admitted that she didn’t actually _want_ to be together, the height difference was only inconvenient when they were kissing. He always had to bend and she always had to stretch. At that moment, she still had to stretch to brush his hair back and look for any signs of blood and he wasn’t exactly bending to help her because he seemed very focused on washing his hands. 

There was, sure enough, a smear of red hidden by his uncharacteristically messy hair. Nancy had winced and looked down at Steve’s hands. There was a glob of soap in the center of his palm that he had been staring at blankly since she entered the bathroom. 

The cleaning had to be postponed so she could drive him to the hospital.

It had been a lot. A lot of professional adults asking her questions about insurance and deductibles and health care plans that she couldn’t answer and Steve definitely couldn’t answer because he was dropping in and out of consciousness on her shoulder. A lot of worrying because people aren’t supposed to sleep when they’re concussed but nothing she did could keep him awake. A lot of guilt over stupid romantic matters that didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things but that she couldn’t stop thinking about. Just a lot of...everything. Only for the doctors to give Steve some painkillers and tell him to take it easy and everything to be resolved so simply, like this wasn’t the billionth thing in a row to nearly give Nancy a heart attack. 

The thing is, all that happened a month ago. A month ago on the dot Eleven had closed the gate and everyone took their first tentative breath. And yet, Steve is currently sitting across from her at lunch with his eyes closed and his knuckles pressed to his forehead. 

“Is it a migraine?” She asks. A few seconds go by without an answer so she leans across the table and gently lays her hand on his shoulder. His eyes open. 

“Hm?”

“Are you having a migraine?” She repeats. “Or just a regular headache?”

“Neither.” He lies and drops his hand. “I’m fine.”

She sits back and looks at Jonathan beside her, who shakes his head in exasperation. He begins repacking the contents of his lunch into his brown paper bag and says, “Let’s eat at my car.”

“So you can subject us to more funeral music?” Steve asks, knowing the actual reason but unwilling to bring attention to it. He also pointedly doesn’t bring attention to the way Nancy grabs his lunch tray for him. 

“I don’t think I’d go with The Smiths at my funeral.” Jonathan says without missing a beat. “But good idea for a mixtape theme.”

Nancy doesn’t mind eating at the car. She likes cold weather, which Mike says is proof that she’s another species, and the possibility of a fight breaking out in front of her is minimized greatly when they aren’t in the lunchroom. It’s still Steve and Jonathan, though, so the risk is always there, however minimal. 

These days the risk of them actually fighting is basically zero. She sits on the hood of the car and watches Jonathan defend his music choices while simultaneously unfolding the sun shade and positioning it in the windshield. She can’t hear Steve’s response from where he’s now laying in the backseat, but she imagines it’s something creatively combative because Jonathan now rolls his eyes. 

This is their routine when Steve gets headaches. Make the car dim, let him lay in comfortable silence in the backseat, then pretend it didn’t happen when the bell rings. Try to pass Billy Hargrove in the hallway without tripping him. 

“You know,” Jonathan says when he settles beside her on the hood, “I think we’re about to reach a breakthrough.”

“How so?”

“He got the pillow out from under the seat himself. You know how he usually acts like it isn’t there and gets all offended when you offer it? That’s progress.”

Nancy takes the first bite of her lunch and contemplates while she chews. Considering the fact that Steve is adamant on pretending he’s perfectly fine, which he’s been dutifully insisting on from the moment he was coherent again, it seems like progress. 

She isn’t sure why he’s being so stubborn. It’s part of his personality, she supposes, and it has been for as long as she’s known him. Last year he’d played as point guard in the big game against Castle Rock with a sprained ankle and only allowed it to be iced after the final buzzer sounded. Back then, she’d assumed that this was because of Steve’s habit to place his entire self worth on trivial things like basketball games and approval from his coach. He still has a tendency to rely too heavily on those things, but now at least there’s the kids to remind him that his space on the Earth is not justified by how many three-pointers he makes. 

She just can’t figure this one out. No one is _watching._ His parents aren’t even around to watch. His old asshole friends aren’t paying attention anymore. His coach apparently took the note from his doctor and told him that as long as he could stand, he could play. There’s literally no reason to act like his head isn’t hurting when the only people there to see it are Nancy and Jonathan, who wouldn’t dream of being judgemental over something so ridiculously out of his control. 

“So what’s the breakthrough?” She sighs. “He admits that he’s had chronic migraines for the past month?”

“Isn’t that what we want?” Jonathan asks, looking at her with confusion over the rim of his Pepsi can. 

“That would be like, the bare minimum. This is the third time he’s had one since Monday. They’re getting worse and I read that if you leave head trauma untreated for long enough, even something like migraines which doesn’t seem like a big deal, it can have lifelong effects. Like _life_ long, Jonathan.”

She may have read all this in a library book last night at around one in the morning and she may have projected her stress about everything in general onto this one issue, sure. But even _if_ this whole thing is just Nancy’s need to fix everything manifesting into the one tangible problem left over from the Upside Down situation that she can foreseeably fix, whatever right? It’s still a problem that needs fixing. 

“But you took him to the hospital after the fight and they said he was okay, right? If his brain was falling apart they probably would’ve told you.”

“Yeah.”

“So there.” Jonathan says, putting down his soda so he can rest his hand on her knee. He needs to give himself more credit for his ability to be comforting. It’s up pretty high on his list of skills. “In an ideal world he wouldn’t be so annoying about it but, you know, it’s Steve. If he wants to be stubborn just let him.”

Nancy isn’t great at just letting things be. Especially when those things are potentially harming one of the members of their very exclusive club of monster fighters who also happen to be Nancy’s favorite people in the world. But it all makes sense when Jonathan lays it out, like he took every tangled up thought in her brain and neatly smoothed them out. 

She leans back against the windshield and takes a sip of Jonathan’s soda. When the warning bell rings twenty minutes later, Steve emerges from the car with his casual, unaffected grin and proudly announces, “I haven’t done my algebra homework and it’s due next period.”

 

“I just don’t think hotdogs are good enough bait. Dart literally ate Dustin’s _cat_ like these things want gourmet shit, you know?”

“Cats are gourmet?”

“You can’t get them in a supermarket so yeah.”

“That’s not…what gourmet _means.”_ Jonathan sounds so genuinely amazed at Steve’s logic that Nancy has to firmly press her wrist against her mouth to keep from audibly laughing. They’re already probably talking a little too loud. 

Deep down Nancy knows this probably isn’t necessary. She didn’t need to drag Jonathan and Steve out to the woods on a Saturday night with a backpack full of uncooked hotdogs and extra rounds for her rifle. But when Hopper has gotten not one but _two_ calls about neighborhood pets going missing and there’s a voice in the back of Nancy’s head that says _we know for a fact Demogorgons are into eating pets_ she can’t just stay home and pretend not to think about it. 

Jonathan and Steve both have weird ways of coping too. Nancy has heard the crackle of Steve’s voice over Mike’s walkie talkie at random times, pretending to ask the kids what time he needs to pick them up from which places in the coming days as if he hasn’t memorized the schedule already and isn’t just desperate to hear each of their voices. Jonathan has admitted to sleeping on Will’s floor some nights, which gives him a sore back but a more peaceful sleep than in his own bed. So they get it. That’s why they aren’t complaining. 

“Wait,” Nancy squints in the direction of multiple bright lights far off in the distance, “is that the football field?”

“Yeah.” Steve immediately confirms. “Is that not where we were going?”

“We were going to Ruby Oaks I thought.” Jonathan says. 

Nancy never realized how little she knows about the town she grew up in until knowing the geography became a necessity. Now she actually has to pull out a map and settle down on a tree stump to figure out where she’s going. Jonathan and Steve don’t seem to mind getting a break because they immediately follow her lead and sit wherever they can find a substantial resting place that isn’t the mud. 

It takes five minutes of tuning them out and trying to differentiate between two forest areas on either side of the football field before she has a new route planned out. Both of the missing animal reports were indeed in Ruby Oaks, which is a neighborhood in the exact opposite direction of where they were headed. Nancy hopes whatever is eating animals isn’t actually a Demogorgon because they aren’t exactly hustling. Also because that would just suck. 

“Okay.” She folds the map up and shoves it into her back pocket. With some help from Jonathan’s outstretched hand, she stands again. “So we took a wrong turn.”

“I could’ve sworn you said we were going to--”

Nancy looks over when Steve abruptly stops talking. She looks over just in time to see his legs evidently give out and send him stumbling forward, only saved from the mud by Jonathan darting forward and grabbing him by the upper arm. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine, _ow_ , Nancy.”

He’s blinking in the yellow beam of her flashlight. She quickly points it downward again and joins Jonathan in crouching by Steve on the fallen log he’s been deposited on. He _looks_ fine, no sign of injury or fever or anything that might make him otherwise incapacitated. That leaves only one explanation. 

“How long has your head hurt?”

“It doesn’t hurt I just--I stood up too fast.” He insists, sounding less confident in his lie than he usually does.

This is a step beyond just headaches. This is actually losing balance, possibly blacking out for a second, she doesn’t even _know_ what this is because he won’t tell her. There are problems she can’t fix, like her little brother having nightmares and missing Eleven, but at least she _knows_ those problems. At least Mike is honest with her. 

“Stop lying, Steve.” Her tone seems to surprise Jonathan and Steve as much as it surprises her. “We want to help you, idiot. Why won’t you just let us?”

“Help me stand up?” He retorts with the stupid fake-obliviousness that he keeps deploying. She knows what he’s hoping for. He’s hoping they’ll just laugh it off and move on with the previous comfortable chatter but she can’t allow that.

“You know what I mean!”

“Guys--” Jonathan attempts.

“Nancy maybe you should stop worrying about _me_ and think about why we’re even out here.”

Jonathan now takes two steps back. Nancy narrows her eyes. 

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

Steve spreads his arms out in a sweeping gesture, sitting up straighter. “It’s January and we’re in the woods! We’re hunting a Demogorgon that’s probably just a coyote or an owl or Billy Hargrove being a sociopath!”

“You didn’t have to come if you think it’s so stupid!” 

“Remember when you said we need to keep our voices down?” Jonathan’s whispering makes her realize that she was actually almost yelling. Steve must not have realized either because his expression is quickly crumbling from defiant stubbornness into something that almost looks like remorse. 

“I _don’t_ think it’s stupid, Nance.” Steve says desperately, leaning forward to put his hand on her shoulder. “It makes sense that you want to make sure! I don’t think that’s stupid at all, it’s your way of dealing. But it worries me sometimes because I know you’d go off on your own if we didn’t come.”

“No I--” She can’t exactly lie to him after yelling at him about lying. She takes a deep breath. “Okay, yeah, but I’d be careful. I can shoot a gun, can either of you do that?”

“No.” Jonathan says, now inching back forward. 

“Nancy I know you hate that this happened to us, and to the kids, and to Joyce and Hopper, but you have to stop trying to fix everything for everyone. That’s why you come out here, right? To kill Demogorgons before they can--”

Steve stops when a raindrop hits his cheek. The three of them simultaneously tilt their heads upwards, where storm clouds have apparently been gathering in the already-black sky without their knowledge and are now releasing rain that’s only getting heavier by the second. 

“Hey, let’s go.” Jonathan sounds mildly relieved. She suspects he may have prayed for this shower to come. She can’t argue with getting out of the rain, especially when Jonathan is quite literally pulling both of them in the direction they came from. 

They run the last two minutes to the car and climb in, now soaked and breathing heavily and quiet because a fight has just occured and Jonathan hates fighting, Steve hates fighting with _Nancy_ , and Nancy doesn’t know if she’s right or not. Usually it’s abundantly clear that she’s right but with this particular situation she can almost see his point. Does she always think it through before marching off into the woods? Does she do everything possible to protect herself, or does she focus entirely on the possibility of killing a Demogorgon and therefore preemptively saving everyone she cares about from it? 

Does she have any right to demand that Steve sort out his issues when she can’t sort out her own? 

Steve passes out the moment they get through the Byers’ front door. So, at least for now, the answer is yes. She has the right. 

“Oh fuck.” Jonathan mutters, dropping down for the second time tonight to crouch beside Steve. Nancy’s heart is beating fast beneath her soaking wet top, which clings to her chest like a second skin. She works without really thinking about it to get Steve in a more comfortable position than he landed in, which means getting him on his back and letting his head rest against her thigh. 

“What the fuck!” A new, alarmed voice speaks from the entryway and Nancy looks up to see Mike, and then just as quickly as he arrived, Dustin and Lucas behind him. Then Max. Then Will, who really out of everyone doesn’t need to see this. Jonathan must agree with that sentiment because he gets up and begins attempting to corral the children back into the living room. 

“Steve’s fine, guys, just give him space.”

“He’s _fine?”_ Dustin repeats incredulously. 

“He looks _dead!”_ Lucas exclaims, effectively pushing Jonathan’s arm away and approaching Steve with the rest of the kids only a step behind him. As if their weird connection is genuinely Steve’s life source, his eyelids actually flutter the moment he’s surrounded by the kids. 

“Ugh.” Steve opens his eyes and looks directly into her’s. “Sorry I was a dick.”

“Sorry I yelled.” She tells him, brushing a strand of hair out of his face. 

“What the fuck is going on?” Mike demands. 

“Chill out, Wheeler.” Steve murmurs, closing his eyes again. “Everyone under the age of thirteen and two months chill out. I know it looks bad but I’m fine, I swear.”

“Did you pass out?” Will asks, so much worry on his face that Nancy can almost feel Steve’s remorse for putting it there. She watches him extend a hand and try to pat Will’s shoulder, but it’s so uncoordinated that Jonathan has to manually guide him to the target. 

“Yeah. I have a headache. Sometimes I get dizzy and I’ll black out for a few seconds. It’s been happening since the concussion but I’ve been dumb and not really telling anyone because I thought it would freak you out, which, I now realize I did not prevent you from feeling freaked out. My bad.”

“Steve oh my God.” Dustin shoves him, probably too hard because Steve immediately groans and weakly tries shoving back. “You can’t not tell us that! Friends don’t lie, remember?”

“I didn’t lie.” Steve replies. “I just didn’t mention it.”

“Well I was lied to.” Jonathan interjects. “Me and Nancy were lied to. Just, y’know, if we’re being specific about it.”

“I suddenly can’t respond. The migraine is too much.” 

“He’s going to do that all the time now.” Max warns them. “You should’ve let him keep lying.”

It’s not really a group effort to get Steve up, but the kids are so eager to help that it ends up being mostly them tugging on Steve’s arms while he does most of the work himself. He does use Dustin to stabilize briefly before making his way to the couch, where each child immediately piles onto either of his sides. He seems relatively alright with this if his serene expression is anything to go off. 

Jonathan retrieves dry clothes for himself and Steve (Nancy gets a combination of Joyce’s jeans, which she has to roll around the ankle, and one of the several shirts she’s left in Jonathan’s closet over the past month) and acts like he chose blindly when Steve complains about getting a Joy Division shirt. Nancy calls Hopper because Joyce is working and they need an actual adult at this point, plus Mike’s entire face lights up when he realizes that this means Eleven will have to come too. 

“Hopper is going to drive you to the hospital.” Nancy informs Steve when she’s off the phone, settled in front of him on the coffee table. “He said ambulances are robbery unless you’re about to stop breathing.”

“I don’t feel like I’m about to stop breathing.” He assures her and every child listening. “Nancy, seriously, I’m sorry. I was deflecting.”

“It’s okay. I mean I _do_ need to think about my own coping methods. And I don’t mean to be overbearing I just--”

“You aren’t overbearing.” Steve says with a laugh. “Nancy, you let me get away with this shit for way longer than these gremlins would have.”

“Yeah.” Dustin confirms. 

“I’ll stop pretending I don’t have head trauma if you stop pretending to be a vigilante superhero.”

He holds his hand out to her, his pinky finger extended. She hooks her’s around his and does a confirming shake to cement the deal. The children watching don’t call them out on their technique so they must have done it right. 

“Which superhero was that comment based on, Steve?” Dustin asks. “Which show have you been watching? Is it Batman? I know you’re watching Batman, I know you secretly watch it when we leave.”

“My head hurts.” Steve says, reclining his head against the cushion and closing his eyes. With the smirk that she hasn’t seen in days, he says, “I can’t comment.”

**Author's Note:**

> so me and my babe @floralathena on here did another one of our adorable little things where we give each other the same prompt and write fics for each other. this is for em but i GUESS everyone else can read it. the prompt was head trauma btw skdjfskjfsl so yeah! head trauma!
> 
> the title is from louisa by lord huron
> 
> follow me on tumblr @bi-harrington and follow em @discosteves


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